Three Feet High and Rising

De La Soul

album cover

Peace and Love Rap

Kings of a head-nodding approach to groove that embraced all kinds of musical expression, De La Soul went from zero to 90 miles per hour faster than any other group in hip-hop history. One minute in 1988 they were Long Island unknowns with a penchant for nonsensical live performances. Months later they were being called the "future of rap."

Three Feet High and Rising is the album responsible for that change—twenty-four songs about flowers and peace and sex and body odor intercut with silly game show skits, with spontaneous raps offset by easygoing, thrown-together chanted refrains. Crucial to its sound is DJ Pasemaster Mase (Vincent Mason). Where most DJs capture a distinct slice of an old record and repurpose it for use as a backdrop, this deep thinker, with encouragement from producer Prince Paul (of Stetsasonic), gives the samples a starring role. He uses them as brief punch lines, wry counterpoints to the narratives, or as split-second "drop-ins" designed to change the mood. The snippets come fast and furious—sometimes MC Posdnous (Kelvin Mercer) will be running some idea down, and he'll stop, seemingly in mid-phrase, to let some surreal, seemingly incongruous old record finish his thought. These sounds include obscure disco singles, a longtime rap standby, as well as vintage jazz titles and hits by the Turtles, Steely Dan, and Johnny Cash. (The Turtles' "You Showed Me," which was used on "Transmitting Live from Mars," eventually got De La Soul into trouble; the band sued the rappers, in one of several cases that established the current precedent known as "sample clearance," in which the owner of the recording must grant permission before it is sampled.)

For all the psychedelic sound-twisting, De La Soul's breakthrough, which topped the Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics' poll after its release, remains even more notable for its stances. Running alongside the inevitable (and often funny) rap-prowess proclamations are anti-drug messages and be-yourself anthems. De La Soul's embrace of nonconformity, on "Me, Myself, and I" and other tracks, may be its biggest contribution: Three Feet High and Rising made it supremely cool to be a hip-hop iconoclast.

Genre: Hip-Hop
Released: 1989, Tommy Boy
Key Tracks: "Me, Myself, and I," "Ghetto Thang," "Say No Go"
Catalog Choice: De La Soul Is Dead
Next Stop: A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory
After That: Mos Def: Black on Both Sides
Book Pages: 217–218